46 pages • 1 hour read
Cormac McCarthyThe Passenger
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Diving
Bobby Western’s primary job as the novel opens is salvage diver. He works for a company that investigates wrecks, and he is on a crew that descends to an underwater plane wreck. The symbolism of diving to the submerged wreck is significant in the novel. One interpretation is that the wreck is the past. Because Bobby feels responsible for his sister Alicia Western’s death, he frequently revisits his actions to determine if he could have behaved differently. Each time he ventures back into the past, he is diving into it, and what he often discovers is a wreck that cannot be salvaged.
Diving also has Freudian undertones in the novel. In one scene, Bobby has taken employment where he is asked to dive into the Mississippi River. While underwater, he feels the tug of the river current overhead. The current of the river could represent consciousness, and in the act of diving, Bobby symbolically has dived into his own subconscious. Bobby also is warned against taking one diving job, with coworkers implying the danger is too great. In another case, he decides against joining Oiler on a diving job in Venezuela due to his own misgivings. Oiler ends up dying on that job.
Passengers
The first scene in which Bobby appears involves a mystery. Bobby senses something is amiss with the underwater plane wreck that he has been sent to investigate, and he concludes that someone else has already been to the site. He later learns that a passenger is missing from the wreckage when unidentified men show up to interrogate him about the plane. The mystery of the plane wreck is never solved in the novel; in fact, the narrative generally moves away from its primary action.
The narrative of a typical novel sets up certain expectations, as though the resolution of the plot is a kind of destination. It does not work that way in this novel. Instead, the novel offers a ride that goes in seemingly random places, with temporal disruptions and nonlinear sequences. The narrative effect is to re-create the aimlessness of its main character, Bobby.
Other passengers in the story include The Kid, who is an unwelcome passenger in Alicia’s mind. For Bobby, Alicia’s presence in his memory signals another kind of passenger, one that he cannot cut loose. Bobby also is a passenger in his own life; his destiny is forever tied to his father’s legacy. Effectively, the novel suggests that in life, humans are all simply passengers being transported to one common and final destination: death. Though humans may feel at times that they are driving the bus, in this novel, they simply are not. Being a passenger is the antithesis to being an agent of one’s own choosing.
Math and Physics
Both Alicia (math) and Bobby (physics) are prodigies in their respective fields. In the larger context of the interaction between the two fields, Alicia represents mathematics, and Bobby represents physics. Also significant is their father, an eminent physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Bobby’s background in physics informs his worldview. He says, “A point devoid of physical being leaves you with location. And a location without reference to some other location cant be expressed” (148). Bobby is questioning whether there is even such a thing as objective reality. He also says, “We cant fully grasp the quantum world because we didnt evolve in that world” (146). Still, this doesn't stop him from trying to grasp at knowledge of the quantum world. The tension that this creates in Bobby is significant in the novel. Alicia and Bobby both need each other to make their lives meaningful. Without one, the other is lost. Without Alicia, Bobby’s reality is meaningless.
Additionally, the novel explores the limits of scientific exploration. With the advent of the atomic bomb, and the legacy of total destruction that it represents, the novel raises the question of how much knowledge is too much. Within the novel, the ethics behind the development of the atomic bomb are directly questioned.
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